The UK needs to take a long-term approach to developing talent if it is to successfully tackle spiralling unemployment, according to Eliot Davies, director at Hays Energy.

Today’s figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal that UK unemployment rose by 44,000 to almost 2.5m in the quarter to the end of December.

Davies told Recruiter: “In reality there is no quick fix. It is both costly and time consuming for individuals to retrain, and therefore many engineering and manufacturing organisations are dependent on bringing in skills from overseas. In fact, many of our UK vacancies in the energy sector are filled with overseas workers.

“The only way job creation in the energy sector will help reduce UK unemployment is if we take a long-term approach to developing professionals with the right skills, rather than just relying on overseas workers.

“The government needs to work with business to better identify and communicate what skills they need now and are likely to need in the future, and ensure there is sufficient funding in place so that individuals go on to study the sciences and gain the engineering skills these organisations require.”

Samantha O’Byrne, head of resourcing at Grant Thornton UK, says: “On the surface the 0.1% increase is a lower rise, but this figure compares to a difficult previous quarter where the unemployment level rose to a 16-year high.

“To aid recovery it is crucial that employers do all they can to support and drive employment for young people. On-the-job training by way of internships and placements play a big part in the development of our young work force and the government should do more to encourage and incentivise these sort of schemes.”

But Carmen Watson, managing director at Pertemps, told Recruiter that the private sector is showing signs of renewed confidence: “In the private sector there are positive signs of renewed confidence in a number of sectors such as IT, engineering and blue collar. Logistics/warehouse is in high demand, which can be linked to the retail industry. 

“The manufacturing industry has welcomed the news that exports are on the increase due to the value of the pound. The converse of this is the public sector where there are real challenges to achieve substantial spending cuts in line with the efficiency reviews.

“Blue collar, engineering and IT-related roles significantly improved throughout January. It is, however, too early to say whether this will prove to be an on-going trend. Evidence suggests companies are still focused on growing their business through the continued placement of roles, involving internal and external sales-related positions.”

Nigel Meager, director of the Institute for Employment Studies, says: “The latest figures suggest yet again that any recovery in the private sector is still too weak to offset the intensifying job loss in the public sector. Overall employment levels continued to fall, while unemployment was up again. Public sector redundancies are already running at 40% more than a year ago and the recent spate of redundancy warnings means that this is bound to accelerate.”